Your Typical Mixing Challenges
Inconsistent Volume Between Speakers
One host is loud and clear, the guest sounds like they're in another room. Different microphones, distances, and room acoustics create volume disparities that force listeners to constantly adjust their volume — the fastest way to lose an audience.
Background Noise and Room Echo
Air conditioning hum, street noise, computer fans, and room reflections are all captured by your microphone. These artifacts might seem minor during recording, but they become obvious and distracting once the audio is compressed and normalized for distribution.
Loudness Doesn't Meet Platform Standards
Spotify requires -14 LUFS for podcasts, Apple Podcasts recommends -16 LUFS, and YouTube has its own targets. If your podcast doesn't meet these standards, the platform either rejects it or normalizes it in ways that may introduce artifacts or reduce perceived quality.
Vocal Sounds Muffled or Boxy
Speaking too far from the mic, using a low-quality microphone, or recording in a small untreated room produces a hollow, boxy sound that makes your content seem unprofessional. Listeners unconsciously associate audio quality with content credibility.
Mouth Clicks, Plosives, and Breath Sounds
Close-miking catches every lip smack, hard "p" and "b" plosive, and heavy breath between sentences. These sounds are natural in conversation but distracting in a recording, especially when listeners are on headphones and these sounds feel unnervingly close.
How RoastYourMix Helps You
- Measure integrated loudness and true peak, and show how much Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube would turn your audio up or down
- Report loudness range, so you can see if the episode swings between quiet and loud passages that make listeners reach for the volume
- Measure tonal balance in four bands in dB; they are tuned on music, so for speech read them as a rough guide to a muffled or harsh voice
- Check stereo width and phase correlation, so an off-center or phasey voice track doesn't thin out on a mono phone speaker
- Report crest factor, so you can tell if compression has squashed the voice flat
What We Analyze for You
- Integrated loudness (LUFS)
- Loudness range
- Tonal balance in four bands (dB)
- Crest factor
- Stereo width and phase correlation
- True peak level
Our Recommendation for You
Mix Revision PassOur pick
Unlimited roasts, every version of a track side by side with the score before and after each revision. 5 deep reports and 1 PDF export a month once the trial ends, 3 deep reports during it.
Producer
Everything in the Pass, plus genre-specific targets, 15 deep reports and 3 PDF exports a month.
Studio
Everything in Producer, the full breakdown in the browser, 50 deep reports and 10 PDF exports a month, and 20% off a human Mix Fix.
The quick answers
I'm not a musician — will this work for podcast audio?
Yes, with one caveat: the analysis is built for music, so the tonal bands and the score are measured against typical music uploads. The loudness numbers carry over directly, and integrated loudness, true peak and loudness range are what matter most for a podcast. You don't need any music knowledge to understand and act on our feedback.
What loudness should my podcast be?
Spotify recommends -14 LUFS, Apple Podcasts targets -16 LUFS, and YouTube prefers -14 LUFS. We measure your integrated loudness and show how many dB Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube would turn it up or down. For true peak, aim for -1 dBTP to prevent clipping on any platform.
Can I upload a multi-person recording for analysis?
Yes. Upload the final mixed-down audio that your listeners will hear. We analyze it as one file, so we can't compare the voices with each other, but loudness range shows how much the level swings overall, next to integrated loudness and true peak. For best results, upload the processed version you plan to distribute.
My recording sounds echoey — can I fix that after recording?
To some degree, yes. Room echo can be reduced with noise reduction tools and careful EQ cuts in the boxy frequency range (300–500 Hz). However, prevention is always better — even a closet full of clothes or a blanket fort makes a dramatic difference. We don't measure echo or reverb, so judge the severity by ear, ideally on headphones, before you decide whether to re-record or fix in post.